Understanding Brand Management

We can’t stress enough how important it is to understand brand management. What exactly is brand management? It’s the strategy behind the way you expect people to perceive your brand. This requires the right kind of formula: you want to remain true to your brand, while offering consumer insights. A report from Aberdeen Group and Oracle recently found that 74% of CMOs considered brand awareness to be a top priority.

Understand the Essence of Your Brand

What needs does your product or service solve? What are you trying to achieve? How can you help your visitors? These are all questions that are the essence and truth of your brand, and you need to evaluate them before making any steps forward. Try this brand exercise: answer the following customer question in one or two sentences, as if you were speaking to them directly:

What is [insert company name] and why do I need it?

The answer to this question should clearly state what the brand is, what questions it answers, and what sets it apart from competitors.

Measure Performance

While it’s difficult to measure performance on brand awareness, it’s still possible, and you’ll need this consumer insight to steer you in the right direction. One way you can do this is through surveys. Conduct research to understand how customers perceive your brand. You can do this by setting up polls or even offering incentives in exchange for this valued insight (like a free e-book or discount code). You can also analyze your website traffic to see where it’s coming from and push your efforts in the right direction.

Another way to do this is by checking the volume of branded searches for your company name against tools like Adwords Keyword Planner or Google Trends. This can help you gauge whether your brand management strategies are working by letting you know whether or not your company’s search volume is increasing.

Put Your Brand in Front of Your Audience

One of the best ways to do this is by contributing regularly to blogs. Depending on the size of your team and/or budget, you might contribute yourself or have an in-house writer or blogger do so. When writing for blogs, it’s important to offer value to the reader without overselling yourself or your business. The goal is to establish trust. Once you’ve built content rich profiles on the authorities blogs in your niche, readers will be more likely to check out what you have to offer. Remember to promote your articles on social media, as well.